I have finally saved up enough to go after the i7-975 Extreme Edition, but I have heard that i9 is coming soon. I understand that it is too early to come to any conclusions since the i9 is not out yet, but based on the available information about the i9, would you recommend waiting for it? I mean, as you can probably imagine, I do not want to spend $1K on the i7-975 now if i9 will make it absolute in a few months.

I am a casual gamer, the system will be primarily used for video editing and web development. Will the price of the i7-975 come down significantly when the i9 is released? Will i9 be even available in the Extreme Edition flavor?

Why so high end? If I were you, I'd get a 920, a good air or closed loop water cooling and push it to 3.8-4Ghz.

Seriously, unless you are using it for passively parallel tasks such as rendering, you will get just as much performance out of a lower-end chip.

I know this will sound lame, but I am not into overclocking or system mods, not because I do not think it works or anything like that, I just do not have the time to deal with it, and I am afraid I do not have enough knowledge to do it myself or deal with potential issues. I want to buy a system for the price that I can afford that just does what I need it to do. I also would like it to be reasonably future proof. I have been relatively satisfied with Dell's XPS systems in the past, so I decided to upgrade to the XPS 9000, which offers i7-920/965/975. From what I understand, the i7-975 is the best CPU out there for the moment, but it does cost $1K. I have saved up enouph money to buy it, but I do not want to spend that much on the CPU if the upcoming i9 is going to blow it out of the water. I can wait a few months and get the i9. On the other hand, if there is no reason to wait, Dell offers 20% off on the XPS 9000 now, so it makes sense to get it if there is no reason to wait for the i9.

Seriously, in your case you would be better off with an i7 860 + P55 combo.

Funny thing is, that is what I was planning to get. Well, actually I was planning to get the i7 940, but I was also considering the i7 860. Out of the blue, Dell pulled those CPU options out of the XPS 9000 configuration. Now it only offers i7-920/965/975.

But the XPS 8000 does offer the i7-860, which comes with dual channel RAM. I have heard that for the maximum performance i7 needs triple channel RAM. Is that true? Anyway, do you think that I will not see a significant difference in performance during relatively intense multitasking such as DVD burning/authoring, MP3 encoding, web development, etc between i7-860 vs. i7-940 or i7-860 vs. i7-975?

there will be absolutely no difference between an i7-860 and the other processors for your use. as for dual channel VS triple channel, the i7-860 is used on the P55 platform which only runs dual channel memory and the performance difference is again, absolutely nothing. as SkyMTL has said, you are much better off with an i7-860 + P55 combo, heck, an i5-750 isn't even out of the question. you really would be throwing money away with an Extreme Edition processor. The price premium does not equate to performance for you (or anyone for that matter really).

And if you don't think that's fast enough.. it literally takes no time to learn how to overclock. It's easier than it might sound. Especially just a mild overclock (such as 3.2 or 3.4 GHz) as compared to 3.8 or 4.0..

I appreciate everyone's feedback. Thank you for making me realize that I do not need the i7-975. This will save me a lot of money that I will spend on the faster hard drive. I am planning to get the Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB drive.